News Brief

December 12, 2007

A German parliament member filed a complaint against the head of Germany’s largest neo-Nazi party.

Udo Voigt of the extreme right-wing National Democratic Party of Germany was accused of Holocaust denial. Sebastian Edathy of the Social Democratic Party, who heads the parliamentary committee for domestic affairs, filed the complaint.

According to a report in the radio broadcast “Report Mainz,” Edathy was reacting to an interview Voigt gave to Iranian journalists that was broadcast in Germany in which he reportedly said “it’s not possible that 6 million” Jews were killed in the Holocaust.

“The most who could have been killed in Auschwitz was 340,000,” said Voigt, who noted that a revised total could lower the reparations that Germany pays to Israel and Holocaust survivors.

Holocaust denial is illegal in Germany.

Voigt also called for the return of areas in Poland that once belonged to Germany. In addition, his representative, Sascha Rossm??ller, asked Iran to assist the National Democratic Party and expressed the hope that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would be available as a “partner for a new Germany.”